3,335 articles
Artie Lange
Artie Lange (Arthur Steven Lange Jr., born 1967) is an American stand-up comedian and actor, an original MADtv cast member, Norm MacDonald collaborator, and Howard Stern Show regular from 2001, author of the #1 bestseller Too Fat to Fish.
Artistic director
Artistic director: the leader who sets the artistic program, season repertoire, and creative identity of a theater, dance company, opera house, or festival, paired with an executive or managing director who handles finances and administration.
Arvind Vaidya (અરવિંદ ગોપાલ વૈદ્ય)
Arvind Vaidya (Arvind Gopal Vaidya, અરવિંદ ગોપાલ વૈદ્ય), Indian actor-director born 1941 in Masur, Maharashtra; Padma Shri 2026; over 300 Gujarati, Marathi, and Hindi plays via Natya Sampada; Bapuji in Anupamaa.
As You Like It
As You Like It, Shakespeare's pastoral comedy first printed in the 1623 First Folio, follows Rosalind, disguised as Ganymede, wooing Orlando in the Forest of Arden; famous for Jaques's "All the world's a stage" speech.
Ashadh ka Ek Din
Ashadh ka Ek Din (आषाढ़ का एक दिन, "One Day in Ashadh") is a 1958 three-act Hindi play by Mohan Rakesh, considered the first modern Hindi play.
Ashfaq Ahmed (اشفاق احمد)
Ashfaq Ahmed (اشفاق احمد), 1925–2004, Pakistani Urdu fiction writer, playwright, and broadcaster; author of Gadarya and Zavia, host of Talqin Shah, husband of Bano Qudsia, Pride of Performance and Sitara-e-Imtiaz recipient.
Ashley Banjo
Ashley Banjo (Ashley Modurotolu Banjo, born 1988) is an English street dancer and choreographer, founder of Diversity, winners of Britain's Got Talent 2009; MBE 2022, judge on Dancing on Ice and Got to Dance.
Ashley Spencer (actress)
Ashley Marie Spencer is an American stage actress and singer from Massillon, Ohio, runner-up on NBC's Grease: You're the One that I Want! (2007), with Broadway roles in Hairspray, Grease, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and Rock of Ages.
Ashley Storrie
Ashley Storrie (born 1986) is a Scottish comedian, writer and actress from Glasgow, daughter of Janey Godley. Known for the viral Scottish Harry Potter video, BBC Radio 4's What's The Story, Ashley Storrie?, and co-creating and starring in the BAFTA-winning BBC sitcom Dinosaur.
Ashwathaman
Ashwathaman (ಅಶ್ವತ್ಥಾಮನ್) is a 1929 Kannada stage play by the Mysore poet B. M. Srikantia that recasts Sophocles' Ajax as a Mahabharata story about Ashwatthama.
Asif Ali (comedian)
Asif Ali is an American stand-up comedian and actor from Phoenix, Arizona, a Goatface founder, star of Wrecked and WandaVision, and co-lead and executive producer of Hulu's Deli Boys; not the Malayalam film actor of the same name.
Asim Chaudhry
Asim Chaudhry (born 1986, Hounslow, London) is a British actor, writer and comedian; also known as Chabuddy G. Co-creator and star of the BBC mockumentary People Just Do Nothing about pirate radio station Kurupt FM, with RTS award, BAFTA nominations, and roles in The Sandman, Barbie, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
Asinamali!
Asinamali! (isiZulu for "We have no money") is a South African anti-apartheid play by Mbongeni Ngema in which five black prisoners tell their life stories; it premiered in 1985.
Assamese drama
Assamese drama (অসমীয়া নাটক) is the dramatic tradition of the Assamese language in Assam, India, founded by Srimanta Sankardev in the fifteenth century and performed as Bhaona.
Atalanta in Calydon
Atalanta in Calydon is an 1865 verse tragedy in Greek dramatic form by the English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, his first critically successful work of poetry.
Atellan farce
Atellan farce (Latin fabula Atellana) was a native Italian masked, largely improvised comic farce performed at Rome from the third century BC, with stock characters like Maccus and Pappus; only fragments survive.
Athalie
Athalie is a five-act verse tragedy by Jean Racine, his last play, first performed in 1691 and drawn from the biblical story of the usurping queen Athaliah.
Athol Fugard
Athol Fugard (1932–2025) was South Africa's foremost playwright, author of about 40 plays including The Blood Knot, Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, The Island, and "Master Harold" … and the Boys, whose apartheid-era dramas won a 2011 Tony and an Oscar via Tsotsi.
Atlantic Theater Company
Atlantic Theater Company, an Off-Broadway theater in Chelsea, Manhattan, founded from David Mamet and William H. Macy's NYU Practical Aesthetics workshops; home of the Atlantic Acting School and Tony-winning productions like Spring Awakening and Kimberly Akimbo.
Atsuko Okatsuka
Atsuko Okatsuka (岡塚敦子), born 1988, is a Taiwan-born, Japan-raised American stand-up comedian in Los Angeles. Known for the HBO special The Intruder (2022), the Hulu special Father (2025), and the viral Drop Challenge with her grandmother.
Atsumori
Atsumori is a Noh play by Zeami Motokiyo, composed before 1423, in which the priest Rensei meets the ghost of Taira no Atsumori, whom he killed at Ichi-no-tani.
Attaprakaram
Attaprakaram (ആട്ടപ്രകാരം), meaning "the procedure for acting," is the Malayalam acting manual of Kutiyattam, the Sanskrit theater of Kerala, preserved secretly by Chakyar families from the 12th to 18th centuries.
Auckland Theatre Company
Auckland Theatre Company is a professional theater company founded in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1992 after the Mercury Theatre collapsed, opening its own ASB Waterfront Theatre in 2016.
Audience
Audience: the collective spectators of a live theatre performance, also called the public or spectateurs. Defined by co-presence in shared time, historical practices such as the standing parterre, and the academic field of audience research.
Auditorium Building
The Auditorium Building is an 1889 Chicago landmark on Michigan Avenue designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, whose theater was the first home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Audra McDonald
Audra McDonald, American soprano and actress, record six-time Tony winner and only performer to win all four acting categories; Juilliard-trained, National Medal of Arts 2015, star of Gypsy.
Audubon Ballroom
The Audubon Ballroom, also called William Fox Audubon Theater or San Juan Theater, was a 1912 Broadway theater and ballroom in Washington Heights where Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965; partly preserved in 1990, it now houses the Shabazz Memorial Center.
August Strindberg
August Strindberg (Johan August Strindberg, 1849–1912), Swedish playwright, novelist, and painter; naturalist dramas The Father, Miss Julie, Creditors; post-Inferno dream plays, Intima Teatern, chamber plays; major influence on expressionism, O'Neill, Beckett, Pinter, Bergman.
August Wilson
August Wilson (Frederick August Kittel, 1945–2005) was an American playwright of the ten-play American Century Cycle set in Pittsburgh's Hill District, winner of Pulitzer Prizes for Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990).
August Wilson Theatre
August Wilson Theatre: Broadway house at 245 W. 52nd St., built 1925 as the Guild Theatre, later ANTA Playhouse and Virginia Theatre, renamed for playwright August Wilson in 2005, about 1,228 seats, owned by ATG Entertainment.